If you don't have Lyfe - Wild Hunt yet but want to try her out, she is available as a Trial Operative in Story Mission 7-12 and 10-12
Powercreep has meant that Wild Hunt doesn't do that much dps compared to the modern 5* operatives, but she still has good mobility, decent damage, good range, works with most support operatives, and has a simple and easy playstyle.
Role: Main DPS
Deals Frost Damage
Deals both ballistic and skill damage
Mobility is good
If Wild Hunt has her M1 Manifestation, then use her standard skill at the start of combat.
If she doesn't have her M1, use her standard skill whenever her standard skill gauge is full.
Use her ult whenever it's available.
Otherwise, just shoot stuff.
Weapon: Stardust Memory /Â Safety Line
Weapon Parts: Max ATK
Logistics Squad: Thebes / Twilight
+10.0% ATK
+106 Alignment Index
+8.5% Frost Damage
Best supports:
Vidya - Celestial Swan
Tess - Phantasia
Passive Effect
Wild Hunt deals massively (+150%) more damage to Frozen targets.
Standard Skill
Wild Hunt has a "Breath of Snow" gauge in the centre of the screen, which recovers over time when Lyfe isn't using her standard skill.
Using her standard skill cuases Lyfe to launch projeciles forewards, dealing AoE frost damage.
Lyfe regenerates 30 Breath of Snow per second when her standard skill isn't active, and uses 25 per shot when it is active, firing at a rate of 1 shot every 0.25s.
(Thus it uses 100 Breath of Snow per second while active.)
The max is 300 Breath of Snow.
This means it takes Wild Hunt 3 seconds to fully deplete her Breath of Snow, and 10 seconds to fully recover it.
This skill has an S-Energy cost of 5 and a 5 second cooldown, so its dps is entirely limited by Lyfe's Breath of Snow regen rate.
With its second Neuronic, this skill gains extra damage if used when the Breath of Snow gauge is full.
This becomes useful with her Manifestation buffs.
With its first Neuronic, each projectile has a 10% chance to Freeze the target for 3s, with a 15s cd per target.
The isn't the most consistent thing ever, but it does allow Wild Hunt to regularly Freeze enemies.
Given that Lyfe's passive Deiwos effect gives her massively more damage vs Frozen targets, having her regularly freeze enemies is a huge buff to her damage.
Ultimate Skill
Wild Hunt's ultimate skill causes her to deal AoE damage in front of her.
Enemies hit are Frozen for 4s (6s with its first Neuronic).
With its second Neuronic, it her ult hits a Frozen target with less than 5% HP, it takes damage equal to its current HP, basically instakilling it.
Wild Hunt's ult has a very long cooldown of 80s, and a U-Energy cost of 100 (i.e. the default max U-Energy cap).
This means its uptime is low and thus its dps isn't great.
Support Skill
Lyfe damages and Freezes enemies in front of her, and applies a frost DoT for 4s that deals damage very 0.5s.
With ths skills first Neuronic buff, it lasts 10s instead of 4.
The total damage is ok for what it is, and inflicting a control effect (Freeze) is good, but like all main dps operatives you really don't want to be using Wild Hunt as a support at all.
Without her 1st Manifestation buff, Wild Hunt deals overwhelmingly ballistic damage - her skill damage is a very small part of her total damage.
After factoring in reloading, Stardust Memory fires at an average RoF if 11.09 shots per second.
With a Compatibility stat of 29.52%, this equates to (29.52% * 11.09) = 327.35% ATK per second, on-average.
Her standard skill deals 38.5% damage every 0.25s, for an average dps of (38.5% *4) = 154% ATK with her M1 buff.
Wild Hunt doesn't really get any buffs to her ballistic damage, but does gain some to her skill damage:
Her standard skills Neuronic gives +20% Final Damage, which is pretty easy to maintain once you have M1, and especially when she has M5.
Her M1 gives +25% Final damage
Stardust Memory's proc give +36% Standard Skill DMG
This increases her standard skills dps to (154% * 1.36 * 1.25 * 1.2) = 314.16%, which is about the same as her SMG deals.
This would mean that Wild Hunt is dealing very roughly equal parts ballistic damage and skill damage.
As such, Wild Hunt is best built as a hybrid dps, making the most use of both her ballistic and skill damage buffs.
It also means that Wild Hunt can make good use of both ballistic and skill damage buffs.
Stardust Memory
Increases Frost damage.
Gives 1 stack of +3% Standard Skill DMG for 3s when your standard skill deals damage, as well as 6 stacks when using your standard skill. Max 12 stacks.
This allows Lyfe a good increase to her standard skill damage.
There aren't many 4* Frost SMGs in the game (basically just Hypochlorus Acid and Ionized Jellyfish), so if you have one, that's her best bet if you don't have Stardust Memory.
Homecoming
The game recommends this despite it being a Kinetic SMG, rather than a Frost one.
It just gives her more ATK.
Atrium Frontline is another Kinetic SMG that also just gives more ATK, although flat ATK rather than Homecoming's %ATK.
These two non-Frost weapon are fine, but Lyfe is generally better off with a Frost SMG, so if you don't have Stardust Memory or a 4* Frost SMG, then you can use the 3* Frost SMG (Safety Line) Lyfe comes with instead without too much loss.
For weapon Parts just go with max ATK.
Thebes
Gives +24% Skill damage as its 2-piece.
Its 3/3 bonus gives +2% ATK for 5s each time a skill hits a target, up to 20 stacks.
+40% ATK is very nice, and since Wild Hunts skill deals damage every 0.25s, she does 4 hits per second, which is enough to max Thebes' effect.
Twilight
Gives +24% Skill damage as its 2-piece.
Whenever an active skill damages the enemy, the enemy gets -16% damage resistance to that damage type for 5s, which is a strong debuff.
With her M1 buff, Wild Hunt can keep Twilight's debuff active indefinitely provided she keeps shooting.
Whether Thebes or Twilight is better depends on what other buffs and support operatives Wild Hunt has.
Amano-Iwato
Gives +10% ADS ballistic damage after a crit, up to 5 stacks.
The requirement to ADS means that Thebes is easier to use and generally better at high investment, but Amano-Iwato is still perfectly fine and works well.
Before Wild Hunt has M1, Amano-Iwato is her best logistics set.
Navigator
Navigator increases the damage a target takes by 14% for 10s after having a control effect inflicted on them.
Since Wild Hunts standards skills first Neuronic gives it a 10% chance to Freeze, Wild Hunt can maintain high uptime on Navigator.
The 15s ICD on Wild Hunts Neuronic does limit the uptime to a theoretical maximum of 66%, but even at 55-60% Navigator is still very strong.
Navigator works much better if Wild Hunt has her M1 buff, and doesn't work as well before that.
For stats you want 10.0% ATK and +106 Alignment Index.
For the Special talent, Lyfe wants 8.5% Frost Damage
Alignment gives her more skill damage.
A lot of Wild Hunt's damage comes from her skills, and skills can't crit, so crit mods aren't very effective for Wild Hunt.
Wild Hunt has no S-Energy issues, so S-Energy regen isn't useful for her.
Her ult isn't that strong either, so U-Energy regen isn't a good stat for her.
With M1, if Lyfe hits an enemy with a Frost SMG, she gains 10 Breath of Frost, and an extra 5 BoS if the shot hits a weakspot.
With Stardust Memory (her 5* weapon) Wild Hunt fires at an average RoF of 11.09 shots per second after factoring in reloading.
This means she is gaining 110.9 BoS per second. This is enough to sustain her standard skill indefinitely.
Being able to keep her standard skill active indefinitely does increase Wild Hunts dps significantly.
Without M1, Wild Hunt's dps primarily comes from her SMG, but M1 does allow her to deal a lot of skill damage as well, making her into more of a hybrid dps.
With M2, firing a projectile from her standard skill increases the damage of her standard skill by 5%, up to 5 stacks.
Due to the high uptime M1 grants, this is basically +25% damage for her standard skill, which is very nice.
M3 increases her Breath of Snow cap from 300 to 500.
Due to her M1, she can sustain Breath of Snow very well with just M1 and her SMG, so I don't consider M3 to be overly strong.
M4 increases the level of her standard skill by 1, and gives it around 10% extra damage (35% -> 38..5%).
A damage increase, but that's all.
M5 decreases the Breath of Snow consumption of each shot of her standard skill from 25 to 20.
This does help her sustain, altohugh her uptime is already so high due to her M1 that I don't think M5 is that strong.
As Wild Hunt is on the standard gacha banner, you will eventually get all of her Manifestations.
If you did want to actually invest into Wild Hunt, then M2 gives good damage with low investment, and is thus a natural stopping point.
Wild Hunt deals good ballistic damage at a very high rate and good skill damage at a very high rate, which mean that she tends to work well with most support operatives, common squad buffs, and enemy debuffs:
Vidya - Celestial Swan (and other resistance shredders)
Celestial Swan and other resistance shredders (Acacia - Kaguya, etc.) that reduce the enemies resistance help enemies take more damage.
If using Celestial Swan, make sure the other support isn't off element to Wild Hunt.
Tess - Phantasia
Per-shot Frost damage works out very well for Lyfe, due to Wild Hunt spending most of her time in combat shooting stuff with a high-RoF SMG.
Phantasia is also on-element to Wild Hunt, allowing her to be used alongside Celestial Swan.
Enya - Exuvia
Wild Hunts high RoF allows her to stack Enya's Zephyr Machine very quickly.
Enya's Zephyr Machine can deal damage every 0.2s, so Wild Hunt dealing skill damage every 0.25s means she can make very good use of Enya's potential.
Exuvia also provides good skill damage buffs that are good for Wild Hunt.
Exuvia is off-element to Wild Hunt (Exuvia deals Electric damage)
Siris - Freefin
Freefin provides strong skill damage buffs, although Lyfe can't make use of Freefin's Wavehunt thermal skill damage buff.
Eatchel - The Cub
Wild Hunt has good mobility, so Eatchel's healing isn't usually critial, but Eatchel's ATK buffs are still strong.
Marian - Riptide
Wild Hunt's damage rotation is so simple that swapping her out to let Marian magdump is very easy, and Marian provides good skill damage buffs for Wild Hunt.
Note that Riptide is off element to Wild Hunt (Riptide deals chaos damage)
Yao - Nightglow
Yao provides a nice ATK buff, decent ballistic damage buffs, and some crit buffs.
Wild Hunt can't make much use of the crit buffs, but the ATK buff is nice, and the ballistic buffs are useful.
Nightglow is off-element to Wild Hunt (Nightglow deals Electrical damage).
Fenny - Starshine
Fenny's ballistic damage buffs are good for Wild Hunt.
Not needing to reload does allow Wild Hunt to shoot more, which is nice, although not a large dps increase as Wild Hunt has high uptime on her SMG already.
Tess - The Magician doesn't really work very well with Wild Hunt, as her ult isn't that strong - your U-Energy is better used for another support operative's buff, rather than Lyfe's ult.
Similarly, the very long cooldown on Lyfe's ult means that Tess only adds one ult to Lyfe every 80 seconds, which is a very low amount of extra dps.